We’ve had a lot of Gowanus fauna items this week, including people catching foot-long bluefish and taking them home for dinner and (thank you, readers for your help identifying this creature) a cormorant we photographed doing some fishing of its own. A blogger and reader sent us a link yesterday to his own post about Gowanus swans. We knew of the swans that had made their home in the Erie Basin around the old Revere Sugar plant in Red Hook, but had never seen any in the Gowanus. (The swan pictured here is one of the Red Hook ones, who was a familiar site there.) Here is a bit of the wonderful post from Stephen P. Williams blog about swans in the Gowanus:
The swan paddled upstream, against the putrid tide, towards the brownfield that will one day house the new Whole Foods. That’s good luck I thought. And then a brown swan joined the white swan, a mating pair, paddling together past the cement plant…They dipped their beaks into the water, searching for crabs, bluefish, jellyfish, all of which I’ve seen, and the bodies, bones, the ghost eyeballs of the bodies that line the canal bed.
Make sure to read the full post by clicking here.
(Note: The swan pictured here is the Red Hook one. Anyone with photos of the Gowanus swans is invited to send them to us at thegowanuslounge (at) gmail (dot) com. In fact, we welcome any tips, stories or photos that readers send our way.)
1 response so far ↓
1 Anonymous // Nov 13, 2007 at 9:25 pm
Up until June, I had a painting studio at 4th and bond, with windows on the canal, next to the cement factory. Saw all sorts of bird life, including swan, herons, cormorant, as well as horseshoe crabs. I must say that the only time I saw the water looking as “pure” as this photo, was on the rare fall or spring day, without rain, or other water turmoil, such as excess sewer runoff, that would make the canal look so wonderfully lake-like. Most of the photos you show are close to the bridges, not at the end of Bond, which makes sense –the sludge and surface are pretty scary! Imagine the high rises that the land owners are banking on!